T-Time and J-day!

Sunday, Jan 27, 2013

“Planes, trains and automobiles…”

In the past 24 hours we’ve been on a plane, train, bus, taxi, and ferry! Such travelers!

We planned a day out to Coromandel Town near the Coromandel national park, an area that everyone said we super beautiful!  Due to our hostel bing super far from the city and it being Sunday morning we booked a taxi for 7:00AM, but by 7:45 when it had still not shown we had to get another one (for cheaper amazingly) and then of course the first one showed up.  But eventually we made it onto the Ferry and had a wonderful 2 hour ride on the ocean.  The last 20 min was super choppy and it was really fun getting tossed around in our little boat!

A view from the top

As normal we didn’t know what we would to until we got there, and we were presented with the option of taking a train up the mountain, and it turned out to be a super awesome view and a very unique train ride.  It was all designed by an old pottery guy and so all along the tracks that were cut into the mountain forestry were random pottery photo opportunities and other random and cool things like walls made of wine bottles and a double decker train bridge! At the top was the “eyeful” tower, a  tree house of sorts with an amazing view on top! It reminded me a little of Dogtown from back home, very quirky but cool.

The Eyeful tower

Other than that we got ice cream, walked the town, and enjoyed our Ferry ride back to Auckland where we wondered and then headed to the airport to pick up Jordana!  Her response to the hostel was great, not quite what she’d expected either, but we made the most of it and had a blast anyways!

A Highlight: As we waited for Jord, we found a super sweet and removed observatory area in the int. terminal and chilled there for a while.  IT’s so much more chill than most of the rest of the airport!

Chilling at the Airport

Monday, Jan 28, 2013

“J-day!”

Starting J-day with Ice cream!!

Today was J-day, so we made Jordana make the decisions. Sort of.  The day included fresh strawberry ice cream for dessert at breakfast, moving to the Base hostel in Auckland, checking out the Skytower (and paying the extra $2 so owe could check it out at night too) and booking jet skis!  Unfortunately due to busy choppy harbor conditions they canceled the jet skis on us.  So, instead we headed out to Mission Beach!!! (after Travis bartered the Taxies down from 36 to 20!)  It was a beautiful day and the water was actually warm (and shallow…3 feet for forever!)

Loving NZ!

In the evening we went back to the skytower for night pics, grabbed some starbucks and then chilled at the hostel. 

A couple of beauts at Mission Beach!

It was really fun to hang out with Jordana, and Travis and I are getting a little crazy after traveling together for over a week…but hopefully Jord still had fun with us!

Pretty Pretty

Random Hap: Today, I heard Milli Vanilli playing over the speakers at the skytower.  Now, that probably won’t mean much to any of you , but it amazed me! Who plays Milli Vanilli!?!  Check them out here.

The view in the day

The view at night

Even more random hap: We met a guy from Morden today at the hostel!!!  He’s going to Capernwray too, but the odds of running into him amaze me!

 Tuesday, Jan 29, 2013

“Goodbye, Hello”

Today was a travel day as we went with Jord from Auckland to Caimbridge to drop her off for school.  Then after having some Dominoes pizza and a nap in the park we hopped on our second bus and headed back to Rotorua, and the eventually we made it to Tui Ridge! 

A fairly typical view by now

In the evening we biked some of the trails and toured the camp, and then caught up on fb/emails and such.  Hence this blog.

Random Hap: We met the random girl that Travis talked to in a park in Wellington, today at the bus stop!  It’s seriously such a small country!

Thought #1: I’m pretty pumped to be at the camp again. As much as I love new things, it does get tiring to always be figuring stuff out and adapting to new situations and places.

Thought #2: Thinking of Jord’s program and talking to some of the new students makes me excited to do something like that where you’re with a small group of people for an extended period of time and I wouldn’t have to do any of the planning.  It sounds really fun!

Thought #3: I’m ready for many of the comforts of home. Friends. Familiar places. Not moving always. I still love the adventure and all the new sights and experiences, but as the week draws to a close, I am looking forward to some home things.  (But not the cold or the expectation to work or the way much is demanded of me, I like the holiday part of being out here!

Random Fact: I paid to use the toilet today, but mostly because they called it a “Superloo!”.  It was…SUPER!

NZ Fact of the day: The North Island is pretty much in a state of drought as they have not received a good rainfall all summer.  It means really nice weather, but the framer are needing rain.

Finally got my police car photo!

1 week left!

Friday, Jan 25, 2013

“Farewell forever Base?”

Well, today was a pretty chill day, and it was wonderful.  We moved from Base to YHA, a different hostel, it’s right on the water and really quite nice.  Very clean, a bit old, but still very well kept.  I’ll be honest thought, as I sit here in lounge room full of people all in complete silence, I find myself missing the pumping bass and general fun and easy to meet people atmosphere of Base.   Anyways, the day:

After switching hostels, we hiked up to where to gondola is (1 hour, all uphill) and wow is it every an active place up there.  We watched helicopters come and go, hang gliders take off, loads of people racing on the luge, bikers using the crazy intense mountain bike trails and there is even a small bungy jump there!  After hanging out and getting our tan on, we took the gondola down to the bottom.

Fav Movie!!

The rest of the day was chilling in the park, walking the town, and then in the evening, we checked out the play we had seen being practiced days earlier.  It was..well, like much dramatic productions are…artsy?  I’m not sure how best to describe it, but we went and were cultured? 

Other than  that it’s been  packing for our flight tomorrow (easier said than done) and chilling in the hostel.  That’s it that’s all, thanks for reading!

Saturday, Jan 26, 2012

“We’re in the air again!”

I’m sensing a pattern her, but today was again a really chill day. We walked around, ate, walked, etc until 3:00 when we bussed to the airport, hung out, and then flew back to the wonderful city of Auckland. 

A highlight was the sweet 50’s diner we had lunch at, very much a “Twisters” feel and I loved it!  They did a great job with the theme!

Upon arriving in Auckland, we got a ride to our new hostel and it got interesting again.  It’s just a hard one to to even explain.  But here goes.  It’s really just a converted house into hostel and it reminds me of an Agatha Christie novel due to the amazing mismatch of travelers brought together for the night.  I told Travis there was going to be a murder to solve in the morning.  It’s really like a house, we chill in the large common living room and kitchen.  We have a pool and a hot tub.  It’s really…relaxed and…homey.  Anyways, its’ sweet, but really different than the others ones we’ve been to.  There’s a large Asian family, A Dutch couple, a American professor, and 2 German guys, and maybe more people I haven’t met.  Meet the Robinsons anyone?  Anyways, we’re 10 min from the airport and 30 min from Auckland which makes it pretty hard to get around, but we’ll figure it out!

Random Fact: There’s a strawberry farm down the road that sells fresh pancakes, waffles, and ice cream every morning!

Queenstown's a great town!

Wednesday, Jan 23, 2013

“To Queenstown!”

The trek continued today like this:

9:50am – Shuttle to airport

12:05- Fly to Queenstown

1:35- Arrival, make way to hostel, book the fun!

Before leaving we walked around Wellington, and it really is just a dirty city, but I reminds me a lot of San Francisco with it’s tall houses build on steep streets. At the airport, things are done differently than we were used to and they run you through security only right before your flight and then you wait for a very short amount on the other side, but there’s nothing to do there, like no restaurants or anything.  Just the seats. But on the upside, they have beanbag chairs to sleep on.  Point for Wellington airport.

Me and my buddy G-dawg

We must be getting better at traveling, because this time we took a shuttle straight to the hostel (no getting lost), and it was much nicer than the last one (but it’s not saying much).

Queenstown is a really cool city and it has a very Banff feel.  Pretty much a resort town.  We booked our bungee jump and jetboat experiences, wandered around a lot, ate at Fergburger because “you haven’t had a burger until you’ve had a Ferg burger”.   Life is so fun, because no matter where we are, we see/experience interesting things. Just sitting in park we saw disc golfers playing, a girl in a Winnipeg jets hoodie, what looked like a Shakespeare play happening around is, and a man in hip-waders plunge into the duck pond in pursuit of a lady’s flown away paper.

Random fact: Queenstown has an indoor ice rink…right beside the lawn bowling.

STORY: Hannah from England

She’s traveling and working for a year, super nice. She accidentally rented a bus instead of a car for a 6hr trip, but she just rolled with it and found passengers to take with her and charged them for the trip.

Loving Queenstown!

Thursday, Jan 24, 2013

“Livin’ it up, BUNGY style!”

Did I mention it was beautiful?

 Today was the day! It’s adventure time!  We have the photos, video, and t-shirts to prove it, but let it be said, Travis and I both did the Nevis Bungee, 134m into a canyon and it was AWESOME! Like…an indescribably amazing feeling!  Actually, the ride up to the site was almost as scary; the full size tour bus was driving on a 1-lane path with a sheer cliff drop off on the other side!  It was intense!

Thats right world, I bought CHERRIES! And I loved them!

The other super fun thing we did today was the shotover Jetboat experience, a high speed cruise though a rock canyon where you come ridiculously close to hitting the rocks and do 360 degree spins on the water too!  It was so much fun we did it twice!  I’d recommend it to everyone as it was a really great time!

Mine was that big too!

Random Fact- According to the bungy scale, I’ve gained  12 pounds since leaving. Wow. I hope it's muscle. :s

So, a bit of honesty here, the BASE hostel chain seems to be pretty much completely aimed at the young party crowd, and it shows.  Due to a rough night of room mates being drunk, locked out, vomiting, and the ever present pounding of the bass from the first floor bar, we’ve decided to spread our wings and branch out into another hostel chain.   We’ve booked tomorrow night with YHA so we’ll see what happens.

One of these things is not like the other...

Photos!

Due to several technical difficulties I was unable to post the photos for the blog last night, so here they are now!

Full house anyone? Even a little bit?

Very steep streets, much like San Francisco

A movie theatre in Wellington 

The cross NZ trek!

Tuesday, Jan 22, 2013
“The Cross NZ Trek”
(Photos coming soon)

So, today we started our 1500km journey from Auckland to Queenstown, “The Adventure Capital of the world!  It was a bit of a crazy plan from the beginning, but it did all work out well, here’s how it went.

6:00am- wake up, pack up, roll out!
7:15- depart by bus from Auckland 
11:10- Arrive in Rotorura, meet chuck, repack bags
12:55pm- depart by bus for Wellington
8:00 - arrive in Wellington, make way to hostel

While traveling like this, it’s amazing how many people we got to talk to, and it just reaffirms the fact that everyone has a story. I’ve pretty much given up on remembering all of them, but here are some examples of the various people we met and heard about their unique lives.
A father of 3 who had managed a pro team more than one as they traveld all over Europe
A tipsy elderly mauri man on vacation
A girl who had been abroad for 2 years in 5 different countries and is now back in NZ for school
A 10 year old heading back to his mom’s place after the weekend with his dad.  He loves minecraft and longboarding.
A 31ish year old doctor on her way to visit family while she takes 6 months off of work

The travels are all part of the fun and Travis and I are both super pumped to get to Queenstown and see what adventures await us there!  As we explain our travel pattern to people, their typical response is laughter as it’s fairly…unconventional. Most people would try to work from 1 direction to the other, while we’re bopping everywhere.  Oh well.

Once we actually arrived in Wellington, it only took us 2 separate occasions of people asking us if were lost before we found our hostel.  It was not nearly as nice as Auckland, but our roommates were nice and we all went to sleep at a decent hour.  

Two things I really noticed from this day.

#1. I have a strong desire to keep a “travelers mentality” upon arriving back home. This means things like driving a few hours is not a problem, taking pictures of everything becomes normal, and I want to make an effort to explore my city, province and country all the time!  So, Churchill, here I come!

#2. Traveling requires constantly learning and adapting.  There are just so many things to know like that you need your own lock for the lockers, need to swipe your key for main door after a certain time, and the list goes on!  New things all the time!

Catchin' you up on the happenings

Saturday, Jan 19, 2013

“I be chillin’ “

What a chillax day.  One of the first in a while, so it was a pretty sweet day.  Basically, I slept in, cleaned up my cabin, went biking on the camp trails, went for  run on the camp trails, did a (really) small workout on the playground equipment and then had a fantastically enjoyable facetime convo with my dear friends KelseyG and Hanza!  (thanks team). 

After that I helped Chuck destroy some rock with the rented digger, had a late “Tea” (supper) and we watched a bit of American idol.  I also learned more about 7^th Day Adventists, but would want to research it a bit more before posting any of my new knowledge for fear of being horribly inaccurate.   Also, I’m pretty excited for my adventure that starts tomorrow!

Looks pretty good.  Like nothing ever happened really.

A view from one of the camp bike trails...typical NZ.

Seriously crushing some rock!

Sunday, Jan 20, 2013

“Adventure time”

Today I attended church with Chuck and his family, and wow have I missed that sense of community and Christian fellowship!  It was an absolutely wonderful experience and I was able to meet SO many wonderful people and they were so…wonderful! I had a huge grin on my face pretty much the whole time and I was just refueled and filled by God!  What a sweet little diverse church.  They also had a solid/together band, and I knew most of the songs they sang.  It was cool to see how similar church is, even in another country.  They too had their various bulletin boards promoting their upcoming mission trips, youth events, and other info. 

We were sitting a few rows behind the “youth section”, and there a was a elderly couple 2 rows in front of us and it was super sweet to see how the youth clearly loved them and gravitated towards them.  I don’t know they were, but clearly the cared about the youth and the youth knew it. As I watched it as an outsider I was challenged to be that type of 60+ year old.

Just 2 other things worth noting. 

#1. We had communion and there were absolutely zero guidelines given and so I carefully watched others to know how they specifically did it.  At first I wished they had provided some more structure, but as it went on, I realized that there was really no was to do it wrong.  It was all good, we were just having communion and that was that.

#2. They had members of their youth preaching all summer (the month of January) and it was super sweet to have a young person give the ‘sermon’.  The guy who preached that Sunday did great, and I thought it was a really great idea and the youth seemed to genuinely appreciate the opportunity.

I also went to Maca’s and had the Kiwi burger, complete with fried egg and beet.  It was ok except for the beet.  While there I received a huge compliment when I commented that the burger was “terrible” (but only when the beet was still in it, I took it out later). Jenny Lynn said that was the first negative thing she’d heard me say.  Wow, after 2 weeks, that’s how she’s seen me be?  That’s exciting, cuz I really want to be a positive person, and that was just a bit of encouragement that I’m succeeding at being who I want to be.

I was then off to Auckland aboard the nakedbus.com line.  (the naked referring to a striped down service with not a lot of frills, but great prices).  On the bus I sat beside Terry from the South Island, and he offered me a place to stay if I made it down there. It was a great conversation and he was able to offer me lots of advice for my upcoming trip!  When we finally arrived in Auclkand, we were late, so I n longer knew what bus to take, so I just walked the 5ish blocks to my hostel.  But as I got close to where it should be, I still had no idea where it was.  A random guy (just looks at me an say “You look lost”) on the street ended up walking with me and his mates to the hostel, where they were staying too.  It’s such a friendly place it amazes me each day.  The hostel is actually super nice, and I have my own room and bathroom, it’s pretty much just a very small hotel room. 

Anyways, I’m up at 4:30 to get Travis, so good night!

Such a great church experience!

Our rather nice hostel room.

Monday, Jan 21, 2013

“Travis Time!”

Ok, so it was a real early morning, but the bussing went great, Travis arrived safely and it so our traveling adventure really starts!  One thing I’m learning is that I need to ask people for advice and help all the time, because they are super willing and able to help.  Another thing I’m learning is that you sometimes have to keep asking for help until you find someone who really does know what they are talking about. (we walked a little bit extra to get to the bus from the airport due to this fact). 

The arrivals area in an international airport may be one of the happiest places around and I much enjoyed sitting there watching all of the joyous reunions.

As for the day, Travis and I went back to the hostel, dropped off his stuff, and then set out to walk the streets and find breakfast (and we found a sweet little place) and then wait until more things were open as at this point it was still before 8:00AM.  At 9:00 we boarded an on-and-off tour bus that went to 14 of the main Auckland attractions, and from there we started sightseeing and snapping pics!  Our sights included some parks/monuments, an aquarium, and the wharf where 2 huge cruise ships sat. 

A highlight from that tour would have to be the crazy and fun aussie kids we met and hung out with for the next few hours!  Where were super fun and if felt like we’d known each forever when it finally came time to say farewell. 

After our many hours of adventure we headed to a sweet little place for lunch, and then back to the room to recharge for the evening’s activities.

For the evening we went out walking (as we did a lot that day) to the pier and it was awesome!  Auckland is a beautiful and very clean city (at least where we were). Travis is a champ at starting conversations with everyone, so we talked to a local who’s a bit of a songwriter and she told us about some stuff to do in the city.  As we walked around, we decided to fly to Queenstown ASAP, rather than hang in Rotorua for a while first.  This meant we had to book bus tickets, hostel rooms, and plane tickets, and all in all the plan is a bit crazy, but we’d have it no other way!

Real life penguins! 

 

Ok friends, who does she look like?

A sweet muffin place for lunch. We pretty
much became regulars there.

Lucy, one of our crazy Aussie friends!

A cool park area on the pier.  

Travis got shrunk!

It was really really beautiful!